When She Falls

by Jessie Clever

  When She Falls

  Jessie Clever

  Copyright © 2016 by Jessica McQuaid

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Someday Lady Publishing, LLC

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9907024-6-7

  Cover Design by The Killion Group

  For Kathy, Doug, and Jamie

  Woof.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Also by Jessie Clever

  About the Author

  One

  Lydia bolted from her car into the rain, dodging puddles as she belatedly attempted to cover her Italian leather tote from the dangerous drops. Her mind was really rattled these days if she’d let her gorgeous tote get exposed to the rain. God, she needed to get a grip She made her way across the sidewalk and up the stoop of her townhouse, forced her keys in the lock and finally tumbled inside.

  The warmth of her townhouse wrapped instantly around her, cocooning her in its deceptive softness while her brain continued to rail at her. She needed a husband. She already had a husband. She had kicked said husband out five years ago. Now she wanted to kick herself. That was about the rundown of her problem.

  She recalled the email she had sent off not three days ago, praying to a god she wasn’t sure ever listened to her that its recipient would finally respond to her and solve all of her worries. Big fat chance of that happening.

  She shed her trench coach and heels at the front door and headed toward her kitchen and a very big glass of wine when a Scottish brogue reached her ears.

  “Hello, Lydia.”

  She screamed. She screamed and jumped, pivoting to grab the nearest thing she could use as a weapon, which was unfortunately the rolled up yoga mat she had dropped on a chair in the front room earlier that day. Her chest heaved. Adrenaline raced through her veins. Her eyes focused on her attacker.

  And then—

  “Fuck, Cam,” was all that came out, and she stood there blinking at him.

  It appeared God was listening, because standing ever so casually in her living room was the very husband she needed.

  Cameron McCray looked…exactly the same. Tousled brown hair, brown eyes, square jaw, broad shoulders and tall stature. Of the four brief months of their marriage, Lydia only had one real memory of him. It was of what he had looked like when he quietly shut the door of her townhouse as he left for the last time. He looked the same now only she could see the front of him instead of the back.

  “You haven’t changed a bit, Mrs. McCray.” His voice was as smooth as his smile. “You bellowed, lady wife?”

  His smile unfurled slowly, a smooth glide across his face as heat unraveled inside of her.

  Lydia wanted to punch that fucking smile off his fucking face.

  She stepped back instead, dropping the yoga mat as her breathing resumed a somewhat normal pace.

  “Ever heard of knocking?”

  Cam pulled a hand from his pocket, a chain of keys dangling from his fingers.

  “Why knock when your wife never took back your key and didn’t change the locks?”

  Lydia wanted to snatch the keys away from him, but it wouldn’t have made sense. If he agreed to help her, he’d need keys to her townhouse. She wasn’t sure why she was having difficulty thinking, but something about his presence had made her mind melt.

  Cam was big and always had been, but now he was softer. He still had the same poise of casualness and humor that he always carried. If she had not known him better, she would have said he was like a lazy Tom cat, stretching out in the sunshine whenever time permitted and not caring in the least where his next meal came from, for it always came. The perpetual five o’clock shadow gave his jaw a decidedly distinguished look, which never quite went along with the rest of him. Lydia found her fingers twitching, recalling what it felt like to run her fingertips across the roughness.

  She suddenly wished she did not need his help so much because she wasn’t sure she could trust herself when he was around.

  She forced her eyes away from him and made her mind focus.

  “I hadn’t expected you to get here so soon,” she said. “Or at all for that matter. You could have called.”

  “After the email I received from my lovely but estranged wife? I think a phone call would be rather inadequate, lass.”

  Lydia wanted to roll her eyes at him with his Scottish accent and Scottish words, doing inexplicable things to her. Unwanted things to her.

  Were they unwanted?

  She blinked at him, turned, and continued on her way to the kitchen. She stepped into the room, the sound of rain louder here as it beat against the large window over the sink. She went straight to the fridge and the bottle of Chardonnay, poured herself a glass, and took a drink all before she heard Cam’s heavy footsteps behind her.

  “You haven’t changed the place much.” His voice was loud and huge in the space she had once thought cozy.

  She turned to face him. He was too big and too close, or perhaps, she just had not been ready for him to come back. Back to Boston, back into her life. Just fucking back. But whichever it was, she needed to get him into a room where she could put space between them and possibly large pieces of furniture. It would take something physical to stop her heart from racing and her fingertips from twitching.

  “It didn’t need changing that I could see,” she said, gesturing with her glass.

  He shook his head. “You know I only drink the good stuff, lass.” His mouth curved into the smile that had once driven her to make some very unlikely decisions.

  “I guess I should have known that,” she mumbled, pushing herself off of the Carrera marble counter top and heading around the peninsula that separated the kitchen from the front sitting room. She put her wine glass down on the peninsula before moving into the room, heading directly for the liquor cart in the corner. She poured Cam two fingers of whiskey and held the glass aloft.

  Cam didn’t move at first. He stood there, his hands in the pockets of his rumpled trousers, and the glass trembled in Lydia’s fingers. She set it quickly down on the peninsula between them, snatching up her own wine glass before moving away, deeper into the sitting room.

  She sat in the cream colored slipper chair farthest away from the kitchen, the one elegantly situated at the window but utterly useless in function and purpose, and tucked her legs underneath her. Her legs slipped against the velvety upholstery, and she tightened her core muscles to keep from falling off the chair entirely. Thank God for yoga or she would have surely fallen flat on her fucking face, covered in wine in front of the one man with whom she wanted nothing more than to appear completely flawless.

  “You didn’t tell me when you were coming,” she said.

  He finally moved, picking up the glass of whiskey and taking a sip.

  “I thought a visit was more in
order. Your email sounded rather…” He took another sip. “Blunt.”

  Lydia watched him, or rather watched the way his clothes moved on him. There was something of perpetual motion about Cam that had always bothered her. For someone so relaxed, his body seemed to be always changing, like a breeze on a very hot day, slipping in and away before anyone could truly appreciate it. It unsettled her, and she watched him now, her feminine instincts threatening to perform cartwheels.

  She dared one more peek at him as she sipped. His suit was rumpled, but she had expected as much. What she had not expected was that it looked to be tailored. The man she remembered marrying wore khakis and a button down shirt if she were lucky. He did not wear tailored suits.

  “Was your flight all right?” she asked.

  “S’not bad,” he said.

  She nearly choked on the wine, closing her eyes and letting the sound of his voice sweep over her once before she could breathe again. There were moments when she completely ignored his accent, forgot it was even there, and then there were other times when just him speaking could make her legs shake and her stomach quiver. It was just his voice for God’s sake, but there was something in his Scottish brogue that brought the sensibleness in her to a crashing demise.

  “You look good, Lydia.”

  And that was surely the final stroke. Her heart stopped suddenly, making a twitching feeling resound through her chest. His dark eyes melted into her, seeing through the practiced facade she had tried so hard to build, but she felt his penetration almost instantly and effortlessly. It was startling in its intensity and unsettling in its effectiveness.

  “Thank you,” she said, but it came out a mere whisper, and she had to swallow. “Thank you,” she said louder this time and with some startling sincerity.

  The line of his jaw was all wrong, and she suspected this exchange was having an effect on him, too. But she could not be sure. She could never be sure when it came to Cam.

  “You look fine as well,” she said.

  Cam smiled. For the first time since she had opened the door, he looked like the man she had married five years ago. All coolness and laughter with nothing in the world to weigh down his shoulders. But if Lydia’s facade was practiced, Cam’s was downright ingrained. She knew how deep his worries ran, worries she couldn’t help diminish.

  Lydia raised her eyebrows, and Cam laughed. The sound of it swept over her weak shoulders and straight down her spine where it drove her senses into a flurry of chaos. He could not do this to her. He could not have this control over her after five years. After five years of…nothing. She had not so much as written him a letter or sent him a fax or cabled him a telegram. There had just been nothing. But in the sound of his laugh, she was right back there. The foolish and scared and defiant twenty-five-year-old who had fallen in love with a Scotsman who made her laugh.

  “You have not changed a bit, Lydia McCray.”

  “Baxter,” she said reflexively, and Cam laughed, the warm sound cutting through that of falling rain against the windows.

  Somehow in that moment Cam’s words were a balm against her rioting emotions, despite her objection to them. Cam McCray had fallen in love with Lydia Baxter once. If he thought she had not changed, then perhaps he would care for her enough still to agree to the favor she would ask of him.

  “What seems to be amiss in the perfectly accessorized life of Miss Lydia Baxter?” Cam came into the sitting room, drifting over to the fireplace, white brick with gray accents, and a perfectly arranged bouquet of peonies that her cleaning service replaced every week with appropriately in-season flowers.

  “I’m working on acquiring a client,” Lydia said to his back, noticing the way the line of his broad shoulders tapered under the tight, charcoal fabric of his tailored suit coat to the fine expanse of his hips, hips she had once locked her legs around and—

  “A very important client.” Her voice was much too loud but her thoughts were dangerously too loud for her peace of mind. “And I require a certain amount of assistance in finishing off the deal.”

  Cam turned toward her, his brown eyes deceptively soft in the watery light of the room.

  “I have a feeling that you’re not talking about my own abilities when it comes to making deals, mergers, and acquisitions.” He took another sip of his whiskey. “I’m not sure what sort of talent I would have at convincing brides. Although, I did a fine job of convincing you. Didn’t I, lass?”

  Lydia shook her head, ignoring the last part of his statement.

  “No, I’m really looking toward something that you are more so than what you have.” She swallowed, feeling the words collide in her throat.

  “What I am?” he asked.

  Lydia’s mouth opened, and she knew she wanted to go on. But the words she wanted didn’t come out.

  Instead, for some very strange reason, she asked, “How’s your mum, Cam?”

  His face changed as she had expected it to, the lines around his eyes crinkling as he smiled.

  “Oh, she’s fine. She spends her winters in Tuscany now, at the villa Da bought back in ’02. Couldn’t be happier.”

  Lydia smiled, unable to help it at the sound of his voice, the sense of caring his words brought forth, and somewhere in her mind the image of Bonnie McCray, short and sharp and so much like her son.

  “How is she…” Lydia couldn’t think of how to phrase the words, but she needn’t have worried. Cam knew what she was trying to say like he always had.

  “She’s getting on fine, I suppose.” He paused, and his voice changed so slightly she almost missed it. “As well as any of us have after Da died.” The tone was almost acerbic, and the near accusation behind his words was so unlike him, Lydia pushed her back against the slipper chair.

  Cam’s fingers pressed into the glass in his hand. Perhaps he wanted to say something then about the unexpected death of his father from a heart attack three years previous. Lydia had read about it in the paper, Cam’s father being a well-connected real estate investor with major interests in markets on both sides of the Atlantic. Lydia had been shocked at the news, had wanted to go to Cam and his family, to comfort Bonnie, but something had stopped her. Something always stopped her when she had wanted to reach out to him so many times over the past five years. Did he resent her for not making contact earlier? Cam always put his family first, his heart so wide it cared for anyone under his protection with a fierceness like that of a bear over her cub. The analogy seemed to fit, and she suddenly saw Cam as if he were a bear, looming over the cub he had failed to protect.

  Lydia shuffled in her seat, an uneasiness washing over her that had not been there previously.

  “I’m truly sorry, Cam,” she said, feeling the inadequacy of her words.

  Cam stiffened, and she readied herself for more subtle accusation. But none came, and he turned away from her.

  “What about your firm?” she asked.

  She had expected to see more about Cam’s foray into venture capitalism, an endeavor he had been planning when they were first married, and was surprised when nothing had come out in the news. Had he been keeping its dealings quiet for publicity’s sake of the companies he funded?

  Cam’s head swung around at her words, his face a blank mask.

  “My firm?” he asked.

  Lydia felt a lick of apprehension but pressed on. “The venture capital firm. You were going to start it—”

  She never finished her sentence as a shake from Cam’s head stopped her words.

  “Ah, the firm,” he said. “Never got off the ground once Da died. Someone had to step in to run the family business.”

  Lydia blinked at him. “But you were going to fund the next revolutionary medical device company. Cure cancer or something. What—”

  Again, she didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Not when McCray Industries would have floundered and put so many people out of work. No, Lydia, someone had to take care of them.”

  And there it was. Cam McCray’s grea
t mission to take care of everyone. Every fucking person including her.

  “I see,” she said, her voice weak and wavering.

  “I suppose the great Edward Baxter is still hale and hearty as usual.” Cam settled onto the love seat opposite her, his large frame making the piece of furniture look like a slightly overgrown chair.

  “Yes, he is,” Lydia said and stopped there.

  If Cam wanted to talk about her father, she was not going to assist him. Edward Baxter was best kept to small, unrevealing sentences.

  Unless she was with Emily or Shannon, her two dearest and closest friends from her days at the Franconia Notch School for Girls. When she was with them, she let all manner of words fly about her father, not all of them G-rated.

  As if reading her mind, Cam asked, “And the girls? How is the fearsome threesome?”

  “Still ragingly fearsome.” Lydia smiled for the first time since her husband’s unexpected arrival on her doorstep.

  “Is Shannon still taking the news world by storm?”

  Lydia laughed, thinking of her most recent visit to Portland and Shannon’s current conundrum of love wreaking disaster through her friend’s positively loveless life.

  “She is, and I think she’ll be named business editor at her paper soon.” Lydia felt the tension in her body ease as she talked about her friends. “And Emily has just taken a new position at the elementary school. She’ll have her own class of first graders this year.”

  “Is she still afraid of her own shadow?” Cam asked, the whiskey glass rolling between the square tips of his fingers.

  Lydia shook her head. “I pity the man who thinks Emily is timid,” she said. “She’s not timid at all, and you know it. It’s only that she likes a quiet, ordinary life. There’s nothing wrong in that.”